What are the ingredients of the most creatively meaningful image of human existence that the mind can conceive? Remove human frailty--as grass, as a … - Huston Smith
" "What are the ingredients of the most creatively meaningful image of human existence that the mind can conceive? Remove human frailty--as grass, as a sigh, as dust, as moth-crushed--and the estimate becomes romantic. Remove grandeur--a little lower than God--and aspiration recedes. Remove sin-the tendency to miss the mark--and sentimentality threatens. Remove freedom--choose ye this day!--and responsibility goes by the board. Remove, finally, divine parentage and life becomes estranged, cut loose and adrift on a cold, indifferent sea. With all that has been discovered about human life in the intervening 2,500 years, it is difficult to find a flaw in this assessment.
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About Huston Smith
Huston Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was a religious studies scholar in the United States, notable for the number of religions of which he considers or has considered himself a member. He is most well known for his book The World's Religions, formerly titled The Religions of Man.
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Huston Cummings Smith
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A second arresting feature of Jesus' language was its invitational style. Instead of telling people what to do or what to believe, he invited them to see things differently, confident that if they did so their behaviour would change accordingly. This called for working with peoples' imaginations more than with their reason or their will.
There are circumstances in the imperfect condition we know as human existence when polygyny is morally preferable to its alternative. Individually, such a condition might arise if, early in the marriage, the wife were to contract paralysis or another disability that would prevent sexual union. Collectively, a war that decimated the male population could provide an example, forcing (as this would) the option between polygyny and depriving a large population of women of motherhood and a nuclear family of any sort. Idealists may call for the exercise of heroic continence in such circumstances, but heroism is never a mass option.
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Hinduism's cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever conceived. We are ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home.
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